Out here in New England it feels a bit like Spring. Which means Spring cleaning, time changes and less Winter coats. Have you ever looked around at Spring cleaning your agency? That’s right dusting off the processes reviewing them and seeing just how efficient are we. If everyone is crying they don’t have enough time we need to super focus on technology and processes. Now that’s of course the answer no one wants to hear. They want you to hire someone new to make their lives easier. The reality is most new hires never get trained accurately so they bog the system down. You don’t see the benefit of a new hire for 6 months if your lucky. So hiring someone new often causes weeks of additional stress to get their system running, trained on your management system and carriers and just general processes. If you want an immediate fix think about slowing down to speed up. On this 5 part series we will review the following time management tips that may melt your insurance brain but do actually work!
- Quoting on the phone (crazy right, can’t be done… wrong!)
- Templates for emails and letters in your system (down to ever single communication, saving seconds matters)
- Being efficient and effective in client communication (building a great client experience efficiently)
- Banning the note pad from the office (why are you jotting notes to type them in?)
- Limiting the time suck of remarketing (how to use remarketing tastefully)
We recommend you share these blogs with your staff. Have a weekly meeting review them, talk about them. Some of these are very controversial. But they are controversial because they take us out of comfort zone. We simply can’t do things the way they have always been done. It’s ok to get uncomfortable if we are trying something new to bring us to a better place. Even if you have been in insurance for 20 years and love your quote sheet try something new for 30 days. It has to be 30 days the first few attempts will seem horrible and then you will get there. We have to remember that our main competitors are quoting on the phone. are efficient and have embraced technology. If we have FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt we need to get over it. Its ok to flub around when you are trying something new. What we can’t do is stay stagnant or say that’s the way it’s always been. That is a sure fire way to get our butt’s kicked.
So let’s get to quoting insurance on the phone. Now immediately everyone reading this is thinking there is no way and your mind goes directly to the 6 car 4 home account. It we were all writing tons of those we wouldn’t be having this conversation. What we need to do is think about the 80% of the time we CAN quote on the phone. Now for my personal lines team members you are also thinking that no one wants to be on the phone that long. I’m going to challenge you. If you have a great sales process they will. You will have one less quote sitting on your desk to respond to “when time allows”, you can ask for the business right there and sell a deal. Why can’t you do this? Let me list out the common excuses I hear (and Im sorry to be harsh but they are all excuses, its the FUD coming through).
- It takes too long-your telling me that asking all the information and putting it directly into your rater to start the quote bridging to the best carrier takes too long. If you are building good rapport this is the way to do it
- I need to focus and run several quotes-we need to come in competitively with great options we don’t need to find the cheapest we need to place business according to the agency goals
- They want it via email-that’s a whole different blog topic you should never email quotes. never.
Bottom line you have to do the follow these time management tips to be efficient:
- Get or use a head set… it will change your life for the better
- Stop using a quote sheet
- Start using Zillow or the tax assessors page to confirm and copy and paste info into the rater
- Know where the agency wants you to place business, if one of those companies is competitive in the rater go there
- Bridge to the company, ask any final questions
- Deliver pricing over the phone and make any edits
- You will be shocked how many yeses you get
- You will be relieved to not have a pile of quotes on your desk that you probably wont sell since the person is long gone
So do you think you can do this 80% of the time, or are you letting your FUD take over. Could you try this for 30 days to work out the kinks?
